Shame

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Shame
Directed by Steve McQueen
with Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale
2011

There is only one thing more surprising than Steve McQueen’s talent: its effortlessness.
Shame portrays the life of Brandon, a successful New Yorker in his thirties, who spends his life between a busy office high up in a skyscraper, a neat modern flat and swanky nightclubs. Behind the elegant, reserved and successful persona he maintains in public there is however a sex addict. The unexpected arrival of his rootless sister Sissy seems to unravel Brandon’s work-sex routine in an unwelcomed, and yet perhaps secretly desired way. Her call for affection, help and attention disturbs Brandon’s materialistic, lonely and detached approach to women in a way that intensifies, as much as it questions, his sexual compulsions. Almost verging onto the tragedy, the movie nevertheless ends with a ray of hope.
The script, co-written by McQueen and Abi Morgan, is a beautiful exercise in balance between frankness and respect. In their directness, the scenes do not spare the viewer, and yet judgement is avoided. Shame builds up like a wave: from the small, unsettling hints of Brandon’s daily routine at the beginning, to his final, giddy run into perdition, the viewer is slowly drawn into a hellish and growing vortex of compulsion and void. But while sex should be about pleasure, Brandon is someone who suffers. Many of the sex sequences are introduced as flashbacks in the character’s mind: as some bewildering reminiscences of a life that happens out of his control.
Michael Fassbender subtly captures the reality of a person who is both the partner in crime and the victim of his own addictions. He gave to the character a powerful presence, letting leak through however all his weakness. In the sex scenes, Fassbender remarkably explores the thin line which divides pleasure and pain, orgasm and agony: often a shadow merges the mark of ecstasy on his face into a deadly mask of anguish and misery. Carey Mulligan, in the role of the sister, perfectly recreates the image of an exuberant, lively bohemian girl, who is in reality lost and hurt. In her rendering of the character, Mulligan works perfectly in accordance with Fassbender, amplifying Brandon’s inner feelings. Her performance of New York New York creates an oasis of sincerity in the movie. The blues arrangement gives to the lyrics a new significance and makes them sinisterly resonate with the life of both Brandon and Sissy.
The greater success of the movie is to make the audience sympathize with Brandon. Just as you witness to his perdition, you wait for his redemption. His perversions do not fully obfuscate his human side: when he finds himself impotent with the only woman he actually knows it is a personal, as well as physical failure. Through the character of the sister, and subtly along the movie, it is suggested that a dark past is what lingers on the two siblings, implying that Shame is not as much a movie about sin, as it is about atonement. Redeeming sex-addiction from the sphere of lust, immorality and taboo, Shame shows its engaged dimension, treating sex-addiction as a serious malaise which deserves attention.
The movie, however, escapes any preaching tone, asserting above all its artistic and poetic dimension. The New York setting is used at its best in order to swiftly mixing the trivial and base with the glittering and glamorous. The soundtrack, in which J.S. Bach figures prominently, gives to certain scenes an epic, remote quality powerfully in disaccord with Brandon’s base and materially sensorial actions.
With Shame, McQueen reassessed, after Hunger, his ability to dissolve the most violent and dense scenes into poignant abstract images of moving lines and colours. The sequence of the threesome is a real visual bliss: a vibration of curves, lines and golden light which deploys itself in front of our eyes with violence, elegance and beautiful sadness.
fiamma

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